Health Trend Alert: Juicing

The juicing revolution—like the green smoothie trend—has had a steady cult following among the country’s “greenies” and health buffs. Recently, however, the popularity of juicing has skyrocketed, and has caught on with all sorts of people, particularly busy moms, homemakers, even celebrities. Some noted “juicing moms” in Hollywood are vegan vixen Alicia Silverstone and goop goddess Gwyneth Paltrow, while locally, we’ve been seeing a few celebrity moms getting their green on, like TV host Amanda Griffin-Jacob.

Juicing is obviously a quick and easy way to add a healthy, energizing boost to any day. For many people, it’s a means towards a clean, whole food-based diet. For others, it’s a way to lose weight. But for most families who decide to regularly practice juicing, it is a way to educate the family to be more conscious about food, and to make better dietary choices.

For moms like Aileen Albano, juicing is both a healthy practice and a great bonding experience since it’s a lifestyle change that is more fun to do when done with family and/or friends. The co-owner of the popular juicing company Juice Jab—a company that provides ready-made juice cleanse programs here in Manila, Aileen believes that regular juicing can “make up for times when we eat more bad than good. Juicing played a significant part in achieving our health goals. It also strongly influenced not only our diet but our overall lifestyle choices as well.”

Why moms start juicingWe asked some mom-readers of Smart Parenting online about why they juiced. They all had related responses.

1. For weight lossI started juicing because my weight was in a see-saw state and mainly because of health issues,” says Litz Anchinges, a healthy food blogger at mergerguru.com, where she posts juice recipes suited for both adults and kids. She likes juicing because it gives them more energy. “It also replaced (our) unhealthy food cravings, especially for sweets,” adds Litz.

2. As a treatment for diseaseFor mom Zof Leal, juicing was more of a lifestyle shift than anything else, especially in her family. “We started juicing in 2009 when my father was diagnosed with cancer. We did not want to go the chemo-radiation treatment at first so we looked for alternative ways,” says Zof. As her father’s primary caregiver during that time, she also got used to juicing. “My Dad has been cancer free for four years now. Although we decided that he needed to go through an operation after all, his healing was faster and after the two-month rest period he was able to travel again without complications.”